Empire Magazine article
Man On Fire
The IMDb-the essential movie information website and godsend for many a scrambling film journalist says many things about young American actor Chris Evans. It specifies quite clearly that he's not to be confused with that ginger bloke who used to be on the telly. It lists his nickname as 'Cevens', which doesn't exactly push the boundaries of originality. It says that he's six feet tall...and one half inch. And It quotes him as saying, " I'd love to be Tom Cruise." No surprise there-show Empire a young actor who wouldn't want to be Tom Cruise, and we'll show you... Well, as it turns out, we'll show you Chris Evans.
"I don't know who took that quote, I don't know where I said it, but every fu**ing time someone interviews me..." he laughs, "I have never wanted that. He's wonderful, he's a great actor and I'd love to have his success, but as far as emulating who he is in the public eye, I don't think I want that type of career."
The strange thing is he means it... he means it.Evans could easily become one of the main contenders to fill The Cruiser's shoes now that Tom has apparently passed his peak. After all, he's good looking, talented and charismatic, with a happy knack of being the best thing in pretty much everything he's done so far, emerging from Not Another Teen Movie with dignity intact, and confidently anchoring David R. Ellis' buoyant B-movie Cellular.
But it's the double whammy of the Fantastic Four movies and Danny Boyle's journey-to-the-centre-of-the-sun thriller Sunshine that have really turned up the heat on Evans. The former proved that he had star quality in spades, the latter that he had acting chops. And while, right now, Sunshine might seem like the anomaly on Evans CV, in a few years time it could be the likes of Fantastic Four that stick out like sore thumbs.
True to his word, Evans isn't in the lead in Sunshine ( that honour falls to Cillian Murphy), but it's his character, the quick-tempered astronaut Mace who holds together the desperate mission to restart our dying sun, that lodges in your brain after you emerge blinking into the real sunlight, mostly because of Evans innate ability to take what could have been a by-the-book a**hole and make him likeable.
"It's personally enjoyable when the audience likes you, but I think the most important thing to do is tell the truth, and if the truth for Mace isn't exactly the most likeable thing for the audience thats not going to be my problem." says Evans, a Bostonian who studied acting at the prestigious Lee Strasberg Theater Institute in New York. "My problem is to make sure that I'm honest and be interesting. And I think interesting is different from likeable."
Turning a swaggering di**head of an astronaut into a guy you'd like to have a beer with is a trick that Evans has already pulled off before, of course with his most famous role to date: the Fantastic Four's Johnny Storm,aka. the Human Torch. But just as Empire starts to make comparisons, Evans cuts us off with a snort of laughter, "Oh God!" he chuckles. "I think they're polar opposites. True, they can be hot-headed, they're ver much alpha-personality types, but I think they'd hate each other. Put them in the same room and one would end up dead." Which one, we ask? " Probably the one who doesn't have superpowers."
So where does the Fantastic Four fit into Evans desire to get in touch with his inner character actor? "Unfortuanately, with Fantastic Four sometimes you feel like you are making a product," he admits "With Danny, it's just about the film, regardless of whether the 16 to 19 year-old women think so-and-so is attractive. But it's give and take, I chose to do certain movies as stepping stones and now it's a matter of me making sure I don't continue doing Fast And The Furious 8."
Empire can still sense throughout our chat with Evans a raging internal struggle between towing the party line("We were all dedicated to making this better than the first") and a desire to tell it how he see's it. An Empire observation that internet fanboys seem to be genuinely excited about the second coming of Bendy Stretcheroonie and co. provokes the following: "Well, I have yet to read alot of it, but I think they're curious if we could possibly be any worse. I think whenever a movie makes a lot of money, and it's critiqued terribly, then if you're going to make a sequel, people are kind of waiting with their arms crossed, waiting to see if we can improve."
Ouch, still, Evans recognises that doing movies like FF allows him to accrue more power and clout and, more importantly, money ("I owe that movie everything, it's the reason I'm not waiting tables and that's a fu**ing blessing"), thus allowing him to do what he really wants to do and-hey! guess what that is? "I would love to direct and the sooner I can do that, the better," admits Evans. "I love acting to death, but I love watching a director set up a shot and talk to an actor and be a storyteller,and rehearse. I'm talking a million to two million-dollar budgets, character pieces. I don't think I'd ever want to make a big studio film."
Not that he's ruling out blockbusters as an actor-after all, he's signed onto a third Fantastic Four, and he's smart enough to know that one big payday equals directing debut. "At this point it's not even important now," he says, "If tomorrow Steven Spielberg said, 'Chris I have a movie where you walk across the camera and wave,' you can bet your a*s I'm doing it." So can we expect Evans in Indiana Jones And The Waving Dude? "That would be awesome!" laughs Evans. "I'd see that movie. Harrison Ford can just punch me out. One punch, a knockout. It's indiana Jones, you know?"
